Contents tagged with brownstone

Frozen moment of judicial compassion

By Valerie Mutton

November 11 2011 issue Lawyers Weekly

Justice Harvey Brownstone presides at a suburban Toronto building in which 6,000 family court cases are open at any given moment. It is the busiest such setting in the country. But when he senses someone appearing before him has difficulty reading, he doesn’t mind taking a moment, slowing things down and carefully guiding the proceedings to make certain everyone grasps what’s going on. In a venue with no shortage of painful vignettes, these moments form poignant contrasts...

"Trailblazer” isn’t a term often associated with divorce professionals. With the divorce rate hovering around 50 per cent, and over a million children annually experiencing their parent’s divorce, it is critical that couples understand the impact of divorce on families, children, the individual and society.

We are all aware that the single most important area of law that touches more people's lives than any other is family law. This is because family breakdown has reached epidemic proportions in North America, due in part to the facility and speed with which the multiplicity of social networking websites on the internet have enabled people to embark upon and terminate relationships. In recent years, family courts across the continent have become clogged with an avalanche of unsuccessful short-term relationships – relationships that were just long enough to produce a child. There is every reason to assume that this trend will continue as more and more people choose to engage in intimate relationships with partners they barely know.

Despite the widespread incidence of relationship breakdown, most people I encounter in my courtroom are remarkably ignorant of even the most basic principles of family law. The fact that in most major centers in Canada, up to 70% of all family court litigants are self-represented, only makes the problem worse. And the fact that a great number of family court cases involve vulnerable children caught in the middle of high conflict parental disputes, makes the situation urgent for the parents and children involved...

Move over, Dr. Phil. Here comes the judge, as in Ontario Court Justice Harvey Brownstone.The Toronto family court judge has added a new jurisdiction to his purview on Tuesday nights at 10:30 p.m. on CHCH TV in Hamilton, Ont., as well as the CHEK network...

DM: Justice Brownstone, from your perspective on the bench, what divorce issues have changed the most over the last 15 years?

JB: There are three things that have changed the most in the past 15 years. They are the Internet, the Internet, and the Internet! Judges have witnessed a complete revolution in both the composition and, unfortunately, the decomposition of relationships because of the Internet. And this has led to an avalanche of failed relationships that the court system must somehow deal with. And when I say avalanche I’m not exaggerating. It’s truly an avalanche. There’s no other way to describe it.

DM: How has the Internet helped create this avalanche?

JB: For starters, the problem today is that the Internet makes it so easy for people to meet and convince themselves that they’re madly, deeply in love. Of course most of them aren’t in love. They’re infatuated, excited, and swept up in the fantasy. They can pretend to be someone they aren’t, and they can just as easily be vulnerable to someone else’s deception...

Justice Brownstone is on the Roy Green Show today at 1pm Vancouver time (Sept. 18). Listen in on your local radio station in Vancouver, Kamloops, Kelowna, Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, London, Hamilton and Toronto. Or listen in online:

Ontario judge hits airwaves to sate appetite for legal info

'I'm changing the judicial culture,' he says

Trail-blazing Ontario judge Harvey Brownstone is moving to television and dragging other jurists with him, as he single-handedly tries to transform judicial culture.

The first Canadian judge to declare he was gay, the first to produce a best-selling book on marriage wars and the first to push the envelope with an Internet talk show, Brownstone says he is ramping up his charisma and flamboyance.

The country's hidebound judiciary is holding its breath - how far will he go this time? Manitoba Chief Justice Richard Scott, chair of the Canadian Judicial Council's conduct committee, has already predicted "somebody is sure as heck going to file a complaint . about something the judge has said on the air."

The Star's story on childhood obesity - can children be removed from the home or parents lose custody because their kids are obese?Justice Brownstone points out that there must be VERY strong evidence of neglect to remove a child for this reason. A very interesting topic...

Excellent article all about our host, Justice Harvey Brownstone's life, his book, and his new show."As if being an openly gay judge is not enough of a distinction, Brownstone, 54, is also remarkable in his outspokenness about the things that makes family law so exasperating for everyone involved. The familial language of love, hate, bitterness, abuse, redemption and revenge does not fit neatly into the system’s language of motions and stays."